Publicity Chair Michelle Clancy

New Initiatives Expand the Technical Program as the 51st Design Automation Conference Opens Advance Registration

Attendees have an unparalleled choice with the added Automotive Track, IP Track and Security Track

LOUISVILLE, Colo. – March 31, 2014 – Continuing the tradition of being in the forefront of electronic design, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) is pleased to announce the technical program for 2014. Advance registration is open today, March 31, 2014. The program consists of an exceptional quality of papers, panels, special sessions, keynotes, SKY Talks, Designer Track presentations, WIP (Work In Progress), workshops, full day tutorials, and training. New to the program in 2014 are three special initiatives focused on: automotive, IP design and security.

•The IP track will have six sessions and a dedicated keynote on Monday, June 2nd, by Sir Houssein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination Technologies.

•The automotive track will take place Tuesday, June 3rd and Wednesday, June 4th. This track will feature three technical sessions, seven special sessions, two panels, two SKYtalks. A dual keynote will be given by Jim Tung, MathWorks Fellow, MathWorks, Inc. and James Buczkowski, Henry Ford Technical Fellow, Ford Motor Company.

The DAC program is tailored for researchers, developers, design engineers and management focused on electronic design automation (EDA), embedded systems and software (ESS), IP, security and automotive software and systems. DAC 2014 will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, from June 1-5, 2014.

Peer-reviewed Papers:

The core of the technical program consists of 174 peer-reviewed papers organized into 29 technical paper sessions: 59% are EDA papers and 41% are divided been embedded systems, mobile, security and automotive papers. Of the 174 papers, 104 are on core EDA topics and 32 are ESS. The remaining 38 papers are divided among three tracks: four mobile, 22 security, and 12 automotive. Twelve papers were selected as best papers candidates.

Papers were selected from 787 submissions, with an acceptance rate of 22%. 2014 marks the highest number of submissions to the conference in the past six years, an increase of 5% from 2013. In addition to papers, there will be 149 posters presented as Works in Progress.

The most popular submissions topics were:

1. Low power design, analysis and devices

2. Hardware, embedded, and cross-layer security

3. Embedded software

4. New and emerging design technologies

5. Physical design closure

Special Sessions:

DAC's Special Sessions aim to highlight specific timely themes and raise awareness of new challenges and directions. This year, a number of key players from both industry and academia will speak at 15 special sessions. The topics span different layers of design including interconnect scaling crisis, near- and long-term emerging transistor technologies, systems and tools for heterogeneous computing, non-mainline/non-functional verification, and data mining techniques for EDA. There are also topics featuring non-traditional systems such as on-chip cortical computing and oscillator-base computing.

On the embedded system side, special sessions will examine the multi-layer approach for reliability, advanced battery management for applications from smartphones to smart buildings, and the Internet of things (IoT). Finally, two special sessions in the mobile track will introduce new advancements in wearable technologies for health and novel ways of making use of the data collected from mobile devices.

SKY Talks:

Last year, DAC introduced a new category in the technical program: SKY Talks. SKY is an abbreviation for Short KeYnotes. The collection of SKY Talks covers a wide variety of topics, with an overall focus on needs and trends. Eight prominent speakers from the following companies and universities will be presenting SKY Talks: ANSYS, Cryptography Research, Ginkgo BioWorks, Green Hills Software, National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center, National Science Foundation, University of Illinois, and Xilinx.

Designer Track:

The Designer Track (sponsored by ANSYS, Inc.) continues to drive compelling content pertinent to our wide design community. The Designer Track is targeted for practicing design engineers, system designers, and embedded software developers. This year, submissions were received from 49 companies located in 15 countries. We had a wide and diverse program committee, consisting of 50 experts from 31 companies and 9 countries who undertook the task of reviewing all the submitted content.

The Designer Track has three distinct tracks: Embedded Systems and Software, Back-end Design and Front-end Design. The program committee received a large volume of submitted content that has been complemented by enlisting a large number of industry leaders to talk on the challenges and solutions for advanced node and giga-scale chips and systems.

With 57 presentations spread across 12 speaker sessions and 100+ posters in two sessions, attendees are sure to find the Designer Track content compelling.

Technical Panels:

The Technical Panels this year cover the broadest array of topics in DAC's history. Each topic brings EDA experts together with external luminaries to discuss issues ranging from medical implants, semiconductor manufacturing, automotive, security, and computer vision to EDA issues such as verification, IP and embedded system design.

Panels on embedded system design include modeling and open source embedded software. Attendees will have a chance to see how some of these issues are addressed in real systems for computer vision, medical and automotive electronics. Verification and security are key overwhelming challenges discussed in a number of panels.

Finally, on the technology theme, panels will discuss how to integrate FinFETs in a design flow, what lies beyond them, and how flows will have to change to take into account the large number of manufacturing issues that is ahead.

Tutorials:

Eleven tutorials and five workshops will be hosted at DAC 2014. This year’s tutorials cover cross-layer technologies that continue to be essential for product success and future development – new transistors, physical design, system-level design, 2.5D/3D packaging, low power, silicon validation, embedded systems and software. To get the DAC audience up to speed for the two new themes of DAC 2014 – Automotive and Security -- two tutorials on automotive embedded systems and hardware security are offered.

Workshops:

Five all-day workshops will be featured at DAC this year. These workshops gather together experts for a deep dive into the current state of technology and research on a wide range of topics. The workshops are all presented in parallel all day on Sunday, June 2nd.

Exhibit Floor Highlights:

With over 175 exhibitors, including 12 first time exhibitors, this year’s exhibit floor offers exciting technologies and vendors to attendees. A feature at the exhibition is the ARM® Connected Community® Pavilion, where attendees can visit ARM technology-based demos from ARM partners. Currently 15 partners are exhibiting in the ARM Pavilion.

The DAC Pavilion is one of the major highlights on the exhibition that offers all attendees the opportunity to learn about key areas of design through an eclectic mix of panels, presentations and interviews.

The Pavilion will host a lineup of 16 exciting, educational and entertaining panels including the annual “What’s Hot at DAC” covered by Gary Smith on Monday morning; a fireside chat with Wally Rhines, CEO, Mentor Graphics and James Buczkowski, Henry Ford Technical Fellow, Ford Motor Company; and a device “tear-down” that will be pre-selected by DAC attendees.

New to the exhibit floor for DAC 51 is the Automotive Village. The Automotive Village is the center for tool providers, OEMs and leading automobile manufacturers to meet, talk, listen and learn from each other. Exhibitors include: ANSYS, Dassault Systems, MathWorks, Mentor Graphics, SimuQuest, and Synopsys.

The exhibit floor is open Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 9am – 6pm, followed by a cocktail reception each day from 6:00 - 7:00pm for all attendees and vendors.

About DAC

The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems, and for electronic design automation (EDA) and silicon solutions. A diverse worldwide community representing more than 1,000 organizations attends each year, represented by system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives to researchers and academicians from leading universities. Close to 60 technical sessions selected by a committee of electronic design experts offer information on recent developments and trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and technologies. A highlight of DAC is its exhibition and suite area with approximately 200 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon, intellectual property (IP) and design services providers. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is supported by ACM's Special Interest Group on Design.

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